This old Biostar MCP^ PB M2+ board has been going for a long time but it only has 2 SATA-- which may even be failing.

Over time I have updated the system drivers for x64 operation under Windows Ultimate x64. This was done maybe 2 years ago now. The current CPU is AMD Phenom x3.

I've communicated with Startech tech but the system is the problem.

On the Biostar rig, the card , a two Port SATA, is not seen in Device Manager. On an MSI board setup I have, the board is seen in Windows XP (soon to be converted to the newer Win7 OS.)

How can this site help with that? The Award BIOS contains RAID settings which are currently disabled. Win 7 does not ask for any F6 floppy routines that I know of. I went through that hell previously.

Please provide any starting points or guides for this simple card installation. I have driver disks for both XP and newer x64 obtained from the Startech site. I also looked up a Win7 F6 installer routine .exe but haven't been near that in a while.

I got through the last BIOS tweak and that should be the latest and last available for this discontinued board.

To find out the suitable SATA driver for your StarTech add-in card, we need to know a) the manufacturer of the SATA Controller, which is on the add-on card, andb) the SATA mode (AHCI or RAID) of the Controller.

According to what I found by doing a Google search your 2-Port SATA Controller card has a Marvell 91xx SATA3 Controller, which is running in RAID mode.If I should be right, you will find a suitable driver within the start post of >this< thread within the chapter "E. Marvell" point b).

In this case you will have to use a VIA RAID driver.You can find it >here< within the chapter "I. VIA". If it shouldn't work, please search for the driver, which is on the driver CD you got with the PCI card.

Just checked the manufacturer disk.It has a folder of WIN64 drivers but not read.me text.

How does the install of the VIA take place? Usually a discovery process by the OS says new hardware found or you can see it in Device Manager in Win7. This is where my problem is: No process of discovery initiates on the problem Biostar mb amd no 'Raid device unknown detected ' (Yellow question mark symbol).

So there is no "Unknown device" with a yellow flag shown within the Device Manager?If yes, please expand the Device Manager section "Storage Controllers" and look for a RAID Controller.If there is an "Unknown device", right click onto it, choose "Update Diver Software" > "Browse my computer..." > "Browse" > navigate to the folder, where the (unzipped) driver files are > "OK".

I've re-inspected my Device Manager and see a VIA Raid driver this trip through. It is called the VIA -VT16421 Raid Controller in Device manager. I checked for an install driver prompt with right click on the entry in DM, Win7 said all was ok.

_And_ I changed out a SATA connector. The device is now functioning and I'll test it with some other'storage' drives not currently on system. I'll Also attempt to boot from the card.

But this brings up my other observation and why I might have dropped using the SATA port expansion card:the added hard disk does not show up in POST Power On Self Test with my boot drive and DVD.

Is there another setting in BIOS which would reveal the added 'Raid" device at POST?

@ loninappleton:Since your SATA card is inserted into one of the PCI(e) slots, the connected device(s) are not shown within the BIOS. Only SATA drives, which are directly connected with one of the on-board SATA ports, will be visible within the BIOS.I don't know why you have bought the add-in card, because your on-board SATA Controller obviously does support RAID as well.Now to the drivers: As long as everything works fine, I recommend to chance nothing.

Reason for the card: there's only two SATA on the mainboardand if I want to use a dvd loader and clone disks I need three connects. Adding an SSD at some point(boot drive would be attached to the board) may be an option